Speed dating for the small businessperson, in my hometown!

If anyone were to ask me to name one good thing to come of the current economic crisis, my answer would be, that it ´encouraged´ many of us to take matters into our own hands career wise. Company after company has been forced to downsize, declare bankruptcy or restart, sending many talented people home, jobless, and with little prospect of finding another position.

What do you do in an economy with limited opportunity and where, if you manage to find a job, in a buyer’s market, you never quite feel comfortable and at ease? You are, after all, only one of countless potential employees and if you do not meet the mark there’s a queue of people out there, some younger, some cheaper, some, though less experienced are more flexible ready to take your place, so be eternally grateful that you were chosen. Well, it’s hard to be grateful, spontaneous, and productive when you are constantly looking over your shoulder. It’s hard to be up beat when you are riddled with insecurity.

Take matters into your own hands. Create your own opportunities. Take the time to evaluate your skills, experience, personality, and just what it is that makes you unique and special. Think about your inherent strengths, too. List all the things you do and that make you feel good about yourself. And when you’ve done that, take the plunge, and set up a business.

And that’s what countless people have done. It’s the trend, the way of the future. Offering your services as a ‘freelancer’ or independent entrepreneur is good for you: as long as you deliver the service you promise, you are free to complete the project in a way that best suits you. It is also good for the client/company who hires your services: no extra ballast on the payroll, and no contract of employment, just billing for services rendered.

Easy, you say. And it is, once you have acquired the knack of finding and keeping a steady flow of clients, have learned to maintain a simple bookkeeping system, have learned how to deal with overdue invoices, tax returns and time management, to name but a few issues that might arise.

Yesterday in Alphen aan den Rijn a group of experts in the field offered their services to newly established small businesses to discuss just such issues, and offer information on how to deal with them.

Organized and sponsored by BuildaSite, Patoir vd Vlugt & Verkade, Primo Boekhouden, Stichting Ondernemersklankbord, Kamer van Koophandel (C of C) and Communicatiebureau Vet-Gedrukt, this team of professionals made time to support the up and coming ZZP (Independent Sole Proprietors) community in Alphen aan den Rijn, free of charge, I might add!

It is a rare thing these days, to receive and invitation to an event of this type, free of charge. When I mentioned it to a colleague ZZPer, she, not unexpectedly said, ‘what’s the catch?’ And who can blame her? Phrases like, ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ come to mind. But, I was there, and I can honestly say, I didn’t pay a cent. But more than that, I was given a top quality evening, with an opportunity to talk to more experienced business people, to exchange ideas with other up and coming independents.

And the meal was great, too!

After an introduction by each sponsor, the ZZPers split up into groups. In a period of ten minutes, each group member had to introduce himself, his company and the services he offered. There was also opportunity to talk about the difficulties encountered; the group could then offer solutions, or where appropriate suggest the expertise available in that particular area. Short, to the point and very useful.

Ten minutes later, a sort of musical chairs took place, and the ZZPers shuffled about and formed new groups and again each was given the opportunity to introduce him or herself and talk about their business and services.

One ZZPer might have difficulty setting up and maintaining a simple bookkeeping system, another, like me, may be less able to sell themselves or network efficiently. One ZZPer might just offer a service another needs. And so, like with speed dating matches were made and meetings set up.

Basically, what happened was exactly the principle Marcus Buckingham and others describe in their textbooks on developing strengths and minimising weaknesses. By pairing up with others, we are able to ‘delegate’ our weakness to someone else, whose strength it is, and thus minimise stress and make time free to perform the tasks we are good at, and that we offer through our businesses.

As a business graduate, I don’t have a problem maintaining a simple bookkeeping system: I do not have a shoebox full of receipts and my invoicing system is no more complicated than it needs to be. As a writer and designer, I communicate through my blog and my website. But, when it comes to physically ‘being there’ and presenting my business, it’s another story. But thanks to the generosity of the group who organized last evening’s event, even I am learning to network and be proud of what I do.

They lowered the bar a little and showed me that, should I need it, I have a group of experts to fall back on, should I need their support.

Thanks for their generosity.

Moving On

In the last few posts I have been commenting on the books I have read that have inspired my life, as much as my writing, after having written a lot on my own writing process. The process was written mostly around the birth and growth of my novel, The Cloths of Heaven.
Another novel that I loved writing, and one that was an even more intense emotional journey (if that is possible) is Trash Fire. I hope you enjoy the excerpt included here. It is also one that was written after I had analysed the process and written about it in my previous posts. So, it was also a case of practising what I preached!


MOVING ON
Madeline led her out to the car. Have you ever been in the heart of Connemara before? She asked.
Julie shook her head. Only to Clifden, but then everybody has been to Clifden.
You’ll love our farm. Utterly isolated, but with the advantage of electricity, and good sanitation. We grow our own vegetables, of course, and never eat meat. Bread we bake, though we do buy the flour from the health food store in town.
And Julie did love it. She loved the smell of the peat and the dew in the early morning, fresh and vitalising. She loved the sight of the mauve mist over the black velvet mountains. She loved the feel of the damp, cold grass beneath her naked feet. And when she listened carefully she could hear the bleating sheep on a distant valley and the trickle of the mountain stream. Peace at last.
She helped in the vegetable garden, plucking the weeds from between the onion shoots. She hoed the thick, compacted soil loose so new crops could be planted. She harvested the beans and carrots, the food they would eat in the evenings.
She thought of her own garden, back home. Hers and only hers. The only gardening Dick did was mowing the lawn and then only on the sunniest of days. And because the mowing was his task he had purchased a motor mower for himself. He had wanted to buy one that he could sit on, and steer, so that all he had to do was take care that he drove in a straight line, and gulp beer from a can.
He didn’t. He feared he might look a fool for the neighbours who still pushed their hand mowers and raked the grass into neat piles afterwards. Instead he bought a Flymo with a grass collector and generally took no longer than fifteen minutes to trim their suburban patch of grass. When he was finished he lounged under the parasol in his cushioned recliner and read the paper while drops of perspiration dribbled down his neck and under his white cotton shirt.
And while Dick recovered from his exertion, Julie weeded and thinned and fertilised her vegetable patch at the back of the garden where the sun shone its finest and the hedgerows gave protection from the west wind. She planned to replace the hedgerows next season with some gooseberry bushes that would serve the same purpose but be much more practical. She fancied cultivating a strawberry patch too, and eventually a small vine to creep along the fence that separated her garden from the one next door, on the sunny side of course.
A shadow fell over her. Julie looked up to see Madeline blocking out the sun. She smiled.
You seem to know what you’re doing, Madeline remarked.
I learned it from my mother, Julie said. It’s still a hobby of mine.
The garden, its produce, her grubby hands and nails blackened with soil, all transported her back to when her mother lived, and chattered and tended her vegetables. Past mingled with present. Mother returned to Julie’s mind and heart."
(C) Geraldine Nesbitt 2010

Digging Deep

It’s all too easy to want to hasten the process and just get on with the actual novel, and I am sure there are plenty of novelists who are capable of doing so, but I would strongly recommend that a novice novelist take the time to do a chapter breakdown. The chapter breakdown will serve more than one purpose. Not only will it give more clarity to your initial inspiration, but it will also be a valuable aid in letting your characters evolve. And even more importantly, by going through the mechanics of a chapter breakdown, you will be able to see if there’s enough ‘meat on the bones’ of your plot. If at this stage the plot cannot be padded out into about fifteen chapters, then there’s not enough story to grow into a novel.
Given that you do have a fifteen-chapter story, then the breakdown will be an invaluable aid in your writing of the novel-in-progress. On those dull days when you feel overwhelmed by this project the chapter breakdown will do just that – break it down into manageable parts. It will also be your guide, and keep your mind clear and your thoughts directed. It will serve as a map and hold your focus. If you have chosen a less traditional novel form, one without the constraints of chronology, geography or historical context, then using the chapter breakdown will be your structure. I don’t know whether Michael Ondaatje used a chapter breakdown when writing "The English Patient," but I do know that were I to write such a complex novel, then I would definitely take the time to map out the story in this form.
There are novelists who shy away from a chapter breakdown, believing it will take the spontaneity out of their writing, and prevent the plot from developing and the characters to unfold naturally. And certainly I would agree with this opinion, if you choose to stick to the initial chapter breakdown as though it was written in blood. But if you give yourself the freedom to change and adapt, or swap chapters around, or re-write a whole section, then no, this need not be the case. Then the advantages then outweigh the disadvantages.
And now, with the chapter breakdown completed the first hurdle to your novel presents itself in the form of the OPENING SENTENCE. I have a rather simplistic solution to this – just write whatever comes into your head in order to get the story going. You can always change it at a later stage, even when the first draft is completed. At that stage the story will have grown into its own style and tone and chances are that even if you’d struggled for weeks on that elusive first sentence, you’d want to change it now, anyway! So spare yourself the headache.
I mentioned the word momentum earlier in the article. Now that you’ve written that first word, put that first, virgin idea onto paper (or your word processor), make an appointment with yourself in the same way you would with a colleague, friend or family member, that you will sit in your writing chair at a certain time every day or week. Inspired or not, you will write something. By making this appointment you are creating momentum.
Eventually writing will become as much a part of your daily routine as brushing your teeth. The novel will inhabit your thoughts. The plot will unfold; the characters will talk to you. The novel will live, become real, tangible almost. And who cares if you fail to get it word perfect first time. Just go with the flow. Enjoy the ride. Remember that this is a first draft, and it can always be adapted and improved. A blank page is just a blank page!
When you reach a point where you miss the writing if you break that appointment, when you feel restless when not writing, when you don’t break that appointment because ‘something else’ comes up, you know you are a true writer. You know you have committed to this project.

Home Run

It has been a long distance race, this novel of yours. In the early stages you took well defined, planned out steps, steps that would warm up the muscles but that would at the same time conserve energy and prepare you for the long haul.
In the first section of the novel the characters deepened and became autonomous and to some degree less familiar than you had expected. It followed that the plot too would not follow exactly the lines laid out in the synopsis.
And so, taking a deep breath you moved into the middle section of the story, where, though referring to the chapter breakdown, you allow yourself to be drawn along by the characters.
In this section of the book, though never losing control, you must relinquish the notion that you are omniscient, (in the context of this novel) and that not just possible readers, but you too, are on a journey of discovery. Fiction comes to life when the writer succumbs to this fact, and lets his heart speak. This is not to say that the pen (or the word processor) takes over completely; you the writer will use your instincts and your intelligence to guide the novel along, but there must be some degree of surrender to this organic process.
And then two thirds of the way into the novel you pause for reflection. The characters have grown and deepened; the plot has at particular stages meandered, at others charged along exhaustingly. You find yourself with a lot of loose ends to be tied up. If you find yourself at a loss, the original synopsis and chapter breakdown can be an enormous help now. You see, you had already taught yourself how to complete and conclude a novel in this original scheme and even though the plot may have diverged from your basic idea, you still have enough material to adapt or re-write. And even if you need to re-write the chapter breakdown for the last section, you know you can do it, because you did it before!
In my opinion it doesn’t matter what type of novel you have written, whether it be a thriller, a romance, a psychological drama. It doesn’t matter whether the plot, or the characterisation has ultimately taken the upper hand. In every case, a rounding off of all the elements and a satisfactory last paragraph, or sentence, preceding the words ‘The End’ will make or break the novel. Think back to novels you have read, even ones captivatingly written, ones that have drawn you in and kept you reading till dawn. If that last section, or worse still that last paragraph or sentence has disappointed, then it would have coloured your memory of the entire novel. So, reach a satisfactory conclusion, one that leaves no unwanted loose ends. I say, unwanted, because a deliberate loose end, one that forces you to continue thinking about the story after you have closed the book, is not a ‘loose end’ in the sense of a badly finished novel.
And how exactly do you reach that satisfactory conclusion? By the same means you used to get this far in the first place. Trusting the process, writing from the heart, and finally, listening to your body, because a truly complete conclusion will allow you to take a deep breath, smile broadly and let your shoulders sag a little for a job well done.
In a fast paced novel, one of high suspense and a lot of tension, it is generally a good idea to slow things down, give the reader an opportunity to digest all he has consumed. Soothe the reader, and gently ease him into saying goodbye to the story. In a slower novel, one with possibly a lot of intricate side steps and character motivations, the pace may pick up, turning the conclusion into a real home run, a last sprint or spurt of energy, where the elements just clash together. This type of conclusion hits you in the face, so to speak. I liken it to an Agatha Christie, (Murder on the Orient Express springs to mind). There are numerous elements to be worked out, described; several characters to be developed in depth. Much of the novel is used to do this. The pace is slow enough to give the reader ample opportunity to guess and to assume and inevitably to be wrong footed time and again. But when Agatha Christie decides it is time to lift the veil and draw the reader into the home stretch, the pieces fall in rapid succession, causing the reader to turn the pages furiously. And when the answer is revealed and the story concluded, there is the total satisfaction of knowing that this was the perfect solution, and that all the pieces fit perfectly together. It is then ‘obvious’!
14. Home Run
Arundhati Roy, in The God of Small Things also uses a large part of her novel to lay the ground for her characters and her plot. If it hadn’t been for the sheer wonderment of her writing style and use of vocabulary I might not have stuck with this novel at all. But having waded through this first section, I was delighted to have stuck it out, because the second and third sections of this story are riveting. It is then obvious that every description and every event were necessary to the fulfilling of this novel. Not a word too much. But it is certainly a risk and takes a lot of courage on the part of the writer to pace a novel this way because you are in danger of losing the reader. It takes great skill, and a hypnotic use of language to hold a reader in what might otherwise be just a laborious book.
In contrast, I recently read Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. This initially clever book has us intrigued even before we read the first chapter, as Dave Eggers has slyly used the acknowledgements and foreword to illustrate his ability to break the rules and intrigue us. My respect for his daring lasted until about chapter 5, at which point I had the dreaded suspicion that, despite his clever entree, he really had no idea what he wanted to do with this novel. It was rapidly turning into a badly planned, not very profound, chronicle of his life immediately after the death of his parents, and his parenting of his younger brother. The promise he had shown by breaking a few rules initially, fell into superficiality. Dave Eggers was just not ready to dig deep enough to hold my interest. His characterisation (even though he wrote about real people) was marginal and two dimensional, and by the time he actually visits his parents graves and sheds a tear, I find myself saying ‘so what’. I cannot even remember exactly how he concluded this novel, and clearly any conclusion was not enough to save this novel, that was potentially a work of staggering genius, but turned out to be heartbreakingly disappointing.
Tracy Chevalier’s ‘Falling Angels’ on the other hand, is not particularly fast-paced, but it is set in a time of great social change in England, and this Chevalier uses to her full advantage. Her characters are well thought out, and fit perfectly into the situation of two royal deaths and the suffragette movement in England. I think the consistency of these different elements woven into a novel are underestimated. In Falling Angels we take it for granted because it is so well done. But if it were badly done, we would feel it immediately and come away from the novel feeling vaguely dissatisfied. Chevalier does what everyone wants to do: she makes it all seem easy. Her plot flows; the pace accelerating and decelerating exactly when it must. And the characters evolve and deepen without us even really noticing it. The conclusion is gentle, soothing, satisfying and completely in keeping with the calibre of the novel.
Our aim is to write just such a novel. One where the ending is like a deep, languorous breath. Now, as a final thought, and one I will ponder for the next article: how do you say goodbye, emotionally put it to bed, and distance yourself enough to critically examine the manuscript?